As the investigation into the leak of a CIA agent's name hurtles to an apparent conclusion, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has zeroed in on the role of Vice President Cheney's office, according to lawyers familiar with the case and government officials. The prosecutor has assembled evidence that suggests Cheney's long-standing tensions with the CIA contributed to the unmasking of operative Valerie Plame.
In grand jury sessions, including with New York Times reporter Judith Miller, Fitzgerald has pressed witnesses on what Cheney may have known about the effort to push back against ex-diplomat and Iraq war critic Joseph C. Wilson IV, including the leak of his wife's position at the CIA, Miller and others said. But Fitzgerald has focused more on the role of Cheney's top aides, including Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, lawyers involved in the case said.
One former CIA official told prosecutors early in the probe about efforts by Cheney's office and his allies at the National Security Council to obtain information about Wilson's trip as long as two months before Plame was unmasked in July 2003, according to a person familiar with the account.
So Cheney's office was interested in Wilson and his trip to investigate the purported Iraqi purchases of uranium yellowcake from Niger two months before Plame was unmasked? So now the question is why was Cheney and the NSA interested in Wilson? What were their reasons for this little investigation? Could it be that Wilson was already critical of the White House PR strategy of selling the Iraq war with weapons of mass destruction, even though Wilson and the CIA never found any such weapons? Were they planning to discredit Wilson two months before Plame surfaced? Continuing on with the Post story:
Lawyers in the case said Fitzgerald has focused extensively on whether behind-the-scenes efforts by the vice president's aides and other senior Bush aides were part of a criminal campaign to punish Wilson in part by unmasking his wife.
In a move people involved in the case read as a sign that the end is near, Fitzgerald's spokesman yesterday told the Associated Press that the prosecutor planned to announce his conclusions in Washington, where the grand jury has been meeting, instead of Chicago, where the prosecutor is based.
It could be that the aids were running ahead of Cheney and the president in this campaign for punishing Wilson after his criticism against the Bush administration for the Iraq war. Yet this behind-the-scenes efforts by the VP aids and other senior Bush aids would not have gone on unless their actions were tactfully acknowledged by either the president, the vice-president, or perhaps even Karl Rove. Even more interesting is that Fitzgerald will announce his conclusions in Washington, probably in a major press conference. Fitzgerald wouldn't go to Washington to make this big PR-newsworthy even unless he had something really big to say--perhaps indictments against Rove, Scooter Libby, or even Cheney himself. And Fitzgerald has been shifting his gaze away from the Plame story and towards the infighting between Cheney's office and the CIA. The Post story continues:
In the course of the investigation, Fitzgerald has been exposed to the intense, behind-the-scenes fight between Cheney's office and the CIA over prewar intelligence and the vice president's central role in compiling and then defending the intelligence used to justify the war. Miller, in a first-person account Sunday in the Times, recalled that Libby complained in a June 23, 2003, meeting in his office that the CIA was engaged in "selective leaking" and a "hedging strategy" that would make the agency look equally prescient whether or not weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.
The CIA probably knew there were no WMDs in Iraq. However the White House didn't want to hear that since such reports shredded their PR arguments for going to war with Iraq. The White House was probably demanding intelligence reports favorable to their PR-strategy, and the CIA didn't have any. Hence, the fight between Cheney's office and the CIA. The CIA started leaking their own views to the press, since the White House wouldn't accept their conclusions, causing an even greater rift between the White House and the CIA--Scooter Libby told Judith Miller that regarding the CIA's hedging strategy. According to the Post story:
Starting in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the vice president was at the forefront of a White House campaign to convince Congress and the American public that invading Iraq was central to defeating terrorists worldwide. Cheney, a longtime proponent of toppling Saddam Hussein, led the White House effort to build the case that Iraq was an imminent threat because it possessed a dangerous arsenal of weapons.
Cheney was at the forefront of the White House PR strategy to sell the invasion of Iraq to the American public. He was a proponent for toppling Saddam Hussein. Cheney also believed in the PNAC Doctrine of invading Iraq and setting up a major American protectorate, where the U.S. could project greater military and political power in the Middle East. Cheney was a member of PNAC. Continuing on:
Before the war, he [Cheney] traveled to CIA headquarters for briefings, an unusual move that some critics interpreted as an effort to pressure intelligence officials into supporting his view of the evidence. After the war, when critics started questioning whether the White House relied on faulty information to justify war, Cheney and Libby were central to the effort to defend the intelligence and discredit the naysayers in Congress and elsewhere.
Administration officials acknowledge that Cheney was immersed in Iraq intelligence, and pressed aides repeatedly for information on weapons programs. He regularly requested follow-up information from the CIA and others when a piece of intelligence caught his eye. Wilson's trip, for example, was triggered by a question Cheney asked during a regular morning intelligence briefing. He had received a Defense Intelligence Agency report alleging Iraq had sought uranium from Niger and wanted to know what else the CIA may have known. Cheney's office was not told ahead of time about the Wilson mission to investigate the claim.
Cheney was immersed in the intelligence briefings from the CIA. There is no doubt he was looking for favorable intelligence that he could use to support the Bush administration's arguments for invasion. He was a proponent for the invasion. Cheney's office was at the forefront of the PR effort, and were thus in a prime position to discredit the critics. The allegations that Iraq was purchasing uranium from Niger was an especially cherry-picked piece of intelligence for Cheney. If such allegations were true, it would be hard, concrete evidence that would support the Bush administrations claims for invasion. So Cheney would have wanted everything regarding this piece of intelligence. The CIA had no choice but the investigate this claim. Thus, Joe Wilson enters the picture.
The story does not end. Continuing on:
In the Bush White House, Cheney typically has operated secretly, relying on advice from a tight circle of longtime advisers, including Libby; David Addington, his counsel; and his wife, Lynne, and two children, including Liz, a top State Department official. But a former Cheney aide, who requested anonymity, said it is "implausible" that Cheney himself was involved in the leaking of Plame's name because he rarely, if ever, involved himself in press strategy.
We've seen this happen in the Nixon administration were top Nixon aids were operating in complete secrecy, while conducting illegal activities as smear campaigns against Democratic opponents, and using government resources to conduct illegal intelligence and sabotage activities against political opponents. Remember the bugging of the Democratic HQ at Watergate? The Plumbers? The money laundering of campaign funds to pay for these intelligence and sabotage activities? So now we have the vice president's office also operating in secret, with the vice president relying on a close circle of extremely loyal aids. When an office works in total secrecy with zealously loyal aids, you can bet that those aids will believe that their agenda--their cause--is certainly above the laws that govern the country. And that anyone who opposes their agenda, should be destroyed. The power corrupts them. The real problem with this type of secret office is that the top people who run this office are responsible for creating this type of atmosphere--namely Cheney and ultimately President Bush. They allowed such an atmosphere of secrecy to exist and are thus responsible for the consequences caused by this secrecy--whether they knew about it or not. However, both Bush and Cheney (if he's not indicted) will claim deniability.
This is not the first time we've seen Cheney operate in secret. Remember the Cheney energy commission and the fact that the members names on that commission are still classified today? Cheney may not have been involved in the press strategy for leaking Plames name and discrediting Wilson. But his anger at Wilson and his desire for revenge against Wilson would have prompted his aids to conduct this smear campaign. And Cheney would have played dumb, saying he didn't know what was going on in his office--even though he would have been pleased by the events.
Finally, there is this from the Post story:
One fact apparently critical to Fitzgerald's inquiry is when Libby learned about Plame and her CIA employment. Information that has emerged so far leaves this issue murky. A former CIA official told investigators that Cheney's office was seeking information about Wilson in May 2003, but it's not certain that officials with the vice president learned of the Plame connection then.
Miller, in her account, said Libby raised the issue of Plame in the June 23, 2003, meeting, describing her as a CIA employee and asserting that she had arranged the trip to Niger. Earlier that month, Libby discussed Wilson's trip with The Washington Post but never mentioned his wife.
Senior administration officials said there was a document circulated at the State Department -- before Libby talked to Miller -- that mentioned Plame. It was drafted in June as an administrative letter and addressed to then-Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman, who was acting secretary at the time since Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Deputy Secretary Richard L. Armitage were out of the country.
As a former State Department official involved in the process recalled it, Grossman wanted the letter as background for a meeting at the White House, where the discussion was focused on then growing criticism of Bush's inclusion in his January State of the Union speech of the allegation that Hussein had been seeking uranium from Niger.
The letter to Grossman discussed the reasons the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) did not believe the intelligence, which originated from foreign sources, was accurate. It had a paragraph near the beginning, marked "(S)," meaning it was classified secret, describing a meeting at the CIA in February 2002, attended by another INR analyst, where Plame introduced her husband as the person who was to go to Niger.
First, why was Cheney seeking information from the CIA about Wilson in May 2003? Was Wilson targeted as a critic against the war within the CIA? Then there's this interesting discussion between Libby and Miller in June 23, 2003. Libby starts planting the story of Plame sending her husband Joe Wilson to Niger for the uranium investigation to Miller. And yet earlier that month, Libby talks about Wilson's trip to the Washington Post, but never mentions Wilson's wife. Did Libby know about Wilson's wife when he talked to the Post? Cheney's office was certainly seeking information about Wilson in May, and anything that the CIA would have sent to Cheney would have gone through Libby. So the question here is about the timeline--when did the CIA send information regarding Wilson to Cheney, and when did Libby learn of Wilson's wife working for the CIA? Did Libby know of Wilson's wife when he talked to the Post reporter? If so, then why did he not mention it to the Post, and yet talked about Plame with Miller? Was Libby trying to goad Miller into publishing this story about Plame sending Wilson to Niger in late June?
The State Department letter also provides some tantalizing clues in this scandal. It was a classified letter of a February 2003 CIA meeting which links Valerie Plame with sending her husband Joe Wilson to Niger to investigate the uranium cake purchases by Iraq. It was certainly written before Libby talked to Miller. This letter was to be used as background in a meeting at the White House to respond to the growing criticism against Bush's inclusion of the Niger argument in his State of the Union speech. The big question here is who was at the White House meeting? When did the meeting take place? And who had access to the contents of this letter?
Pop some popcorn, sit back, and watch the exciting conclusion to this scandal as it is played out. Fitzgerald will pop up real soon.
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